Requiem
by Rasengan22
Summary: Because soulmates never die.


What he remembered was waking up in the ambulance with the sirens blaring in his ears. The oxygen mask covered his mouth and the EMT snapped the bands almost too tightly around his head. He was strapped to a gurney; he knew this, because he tried to move his wrists and the restraints cut into his skin. The overhead lights were bright, like looking directly into the sun. The ambulance shifted and swerved. They were talking to him, these two men in uniforms. His eyes had closed half way. Something pinched the inside of his arm, and his eyes snapped open, but he felt groggy. Light faded out to a pinpoint, like a change of scene in an old black and white film. Everything turned into a soothing blackness as if he were floating alone in the ocean at night, listening to the sound of the waves. The pain was going away; there was blissful silence.

There was a sensation of being violently sucked out of his body and thrown into the atmosphere.

Sasuke breathed a sigh of relief.

He was dead.

This was what he'd wanted.

Right?

It was a weird feeling to be so detached from his physical body. It was a freedom like he'd never known. Almost immediately, his concerns had disappeared. The things people worry about: bills, failed relationships, dead-end jobs, a shitty family - he stopped thinking about it all. It became such a stupid idea that he'd ever been so concerned about such things and that people spent their entire life in the worthless pursuit of mediocrity. That they bounced around, basing important life decisions on other people who didn't actually give a damn about them, but that was life when you're alive, isn't it? Just sort of judging your worth on how others see you.

Sasuke liked this place, whatever it was. When he'd put the .38 revolver he'd stolen from his Dad to his temple, he'd been filled with, well, nothing much and with no idea whether there was a life after death. In fact, he'd been banking that there wasn't, which would have been just as well. Nothing meant a complete end to suffering, so there wasn't much to complain about there, but this… this was interesting, too. This was different. He could use a flashlight, but, hey, beggars can't be choosers.

He couldn't see much. Maybe this was that tunnel all those pathetic bastards on TV mentioned. Maybe it was. It felt that way, like walking through a train tunnel, he guessed. Another option high on his list of how to kill himself, but the idea of throwing himself in front of a train, well, that was a bit too overdramatic and messy, and just because he wasn't all that concerned with living anymore, didn't mean he wanted to fuck up someone's plans when the train had to stop and remove his guts from the front, or the windows, or if his intestines got all caught up in the wheels.

No, he didn't want to _inconvenience _anyone.

He walked quite a ways, or floated. Whatever he was doing, he was moving in a forward direction. Not much by choice, though, as it felt as if something was pulling him this way. Maybe toward the light, he didn't know. It's not as if he'd received a death manual. There was no unfinished business he had going on, so he was quite sure this would end in a one-way ticket to… shit, he didn't care. He had to be dead by now, right? There was no chance of them bringing him back at the last minute. That's not what he wanted. That's what he was going to pray for from here until he reached the light, or the door, or the gates of Hell.

_Don't bring me back. Don't bring me back. Don't bring me back._

"That's an interesting mantra."

The voice made Sasuke stop. He spun around, trying to find the source.

"Behind you."

Sasuke turned around, but no one was there.

"In front of you."

He turned again, and this time, someone stood in front of him, so close that they were nearly touching. The eyes were blue. The breath was warm. He had a younger man's voice, maybe even a teenager.

"Ah, yeah, you're right on that one. I didn't make it past 16 this time."

Sasuke froze to the spot, though he'd meant to back away a few steps. "This time?"

"This time," the voice repeated without any indication he'd soon be elaborating. The eyes changed - not in color, but in expression. They grew softer. "Hey, Sasuke."

It greeted him like they knew one another.

"I'm not going back," he said, and side-stepped the - whatever it was - and continued on his way. He could sense it following him, keeping up at his side.

"Are you sure?"

Sasuke didn't answer. Eventually, _it_would go away if he ignored it.

"Sorry, no. I won't be going away, and, for the record, you aren't goin' anywhere unless you deal with me first. It's part of the agreement."

Sasuke kept moving despite the warning. "What agreement?"

"The one we made."

Sasuke made a full stop, and it felt as if someone had just run into him from behind. He put his hand out and thought he touched something warm. "Who are you?" he asked. "A guardian angel or something?"

"Yeah, right."

"Then why do you keep talking like you know me? You don't know me. I just want to - "

"Die? Yeah, I saw that. You've got great aim."

Sasuke sneered. "It did the trick, didn't it? I'm here, aren't I?"

The voice laughed. "You think you have all the answers, you don't even know where here is, Sasuke."

"Shut up. Don't you have some graveyard to haunt or something?"

"Hm. I suppose I could. We all get that option, but then I couldn't have met you here."

"Oh, well. I feel touched by angels already."

The voice laughed. "I've missed you." The tone lowered, "I've missed you."

Something strange went off inside Sasuke. A flash of an image that caused him to stop walking. No, it wasn't an image, but… a sensation. A shock? Like touching a doorknob after walking on thick carpet.

"Are they trying to resuscitate me?" he asked, filled with panic at the idea.

"They could be, but that's not what you just felt."

Sasuke sighed. "So if I deal with you, you'll go away?"

"Do you want me to go away?"

"Yes."

He couldn't see, but he knew the presence was no longer there. He looked around, not breathing or making any movement. It was gone. Even when he hadn't been able to see what it was, he'd felt it there.

Whatever. He continued on.

It felt like hours had gone by, and still nothing changed. He could've been going around in circles and wouldn't have known it, but there was something under his feet. How else could he keep walking like this? If there was a floor, there had to be a ceiling. There had to be an up, at least, and that meant the logical thing to do was to keep going. If this was death, well, it was a bit tedious at best.

"You know," Sasuke jumped when the voice whispered right in his ear, "I can help you if you stop being such a stubborn bastard. You've always been like that though, so I guess I'd be disappointed if you weren't now, but it does always make this so much harder than it has to be."

Sasuke sighed. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Yeah, well that's what happens when you attempt to kill yourself. There are clauses, you know. Rules you can't break. When you commit suicide, you forget everything. It's all very annoying."

"So sorry to trouble you," he snarled and tried to move in a different direction, but it was so damn dark that it was rather ridiculous to think he could get anywhere.

"Nope, you won't get anywhere without my help. Promise you that."

"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to read people's thoughts?" he snapped. Frustrated, Sasuke did stop. He glanced all around, trying to gauge something, _anything _about his surroundings just to give this world some sort of shape he could comprehend.

"You could read mine if you wanted to."

"I wouldn't bother."

"Do you hate this place?"

"I don't hate it. I just… it's annoying," he finished lamely.

"Wanna go somewhere else?"

A warmth came nearer to Sasuke's body, as if someone went to stand behind him. There was a weight on his shoulder. The shock hit him again, and with a vivid flash of… No, he couldn't grasp it.

The voice became melancholy. "We'll go somewhere else."

Again, there was the violent dislocation of his self and he landed flat on his face on what felt like cold concrete. Tires screeched. Sasuke looked up, and a car, its wheels squealing and spinning, missed his head by inches. He turned his head just in time to watch it crash into another car, which flipped several times after flying off the side of the road. The roof collapsed in on itself after the second roll, and the glass from the windows and windshield splintered across the ground.

It felt real. He could feel the chill of the air on his skin. He could see the one car with its front smashed in and the airbag inflated. He could see, so clearly, the other car or, rather, what was left of it. Without thinking, he got to his feet and went toward it. He saw a severed arm lying on the ground and nearly vomited, but he had to…

Sasuke walked over glass and kicked aside broken pieces of metal. The wheels were still spinning. There was a body - a girl, he thought - that had gone through the windshield on the passenger side. She lay on the hood of the car, staring lifelessly at him, half of her skull missing. The roof had crushed whoever had been in the driver's seat. The door to the back seat was open, half way off its hinging. Sasuke, his heart thumping in his chest, moved to peer inside.

"Are you sure you want to look?"

The voice made him jump. He turned around, but no one was there.

"You're not gonna like what you see."

"If you're not going to bother to show yourself to me, then I'm not going to take anything you say seriously."

Sasuke pushed the door out of the way. In the back seat was a young blond boy - maybe 16 - with a large shard of glass going right through the center of his chest and pinning him to the seat. Both his mouth and eyes were open. It might've been an instant death, but nothing about it looked painless or peaceful. His hands rested, palm-side up, on either side of the seat, which was covered in numerous splatterings of blood.

He could smell it. This was… terrible and… no, not what he'd wanted to see at all. He stumbled a few steps backward, nearly tripping over something as he covered his mouth with his hand. The bile rose in his mouth. He was going to be sick - but then, then it all went back to darkness, the vivid images still impressed upon his mind.

"Did you guess it yet?" asked the voice.

"That was you," he answered quietly. He had to sit. Sasuke pulled his knees up to his chest.

"That was me. Not a good way to go, I'll give you that."

"Who else was in the car?" he asked.

"Friends from school."

"You were really young," he couldn't help but point out.

"This time, yeah."

"This time?"

"Sasuke." His name was said with the weight of someone's last breath. "Do you get it now?"

Sasuke shivered. The voice was near him, all around him, really, but his back felt warm, as if a body was pressed against him.

"I don't know you," he said, a little desperate. Something squeezed around his middle.

"You do. You know you do. Or you wouldn't sound like that. You just… are choosing not to remember. It's a shame, really. Do you know, we would've met somewhere down the line. Had I not died, but, that's how it goes. S'a bit of a crapshoot really."

"Crapshoot?"

"Sometimes we meet, sometimes we don't. Even when we meet, it doesn't always work out."

"Who are you to me?"

"Dunno." the warmth disappeared from Sauke's middle. It moved around him. "But we follow each other around. Only in these… places, do we realize it. Like, when I was alive, as that boy, had no idea you even existed on this planet. We were… thousands of miles apart. I dunno if we would've met, but we might've."

Sasuke found it hard to breathe. Everything felt as if it were shifting. "Can you… what about the other times we've… met?"

"Yeah. I'm not allowed to tell you."

"All because I tried to kill myself?"

"Pretty much. But, in the next lifetime, so long as you don't make the same stupid mistake, then, well, the next time you die, you'll get to see and know everything."

"I'll do it again then," Sasuke shouted suddenly, and in the place where his heart would've been, he said it over and over and over again and prayed and wished that in the next life, he'd take a gun to his head the second he could manage it.

"I'd be offended about what you're thinking if I didn't understand."

Sasuke choked down his anger as he spoke, "Understand?" he yelled. "What the fuck do you understand? You think it's okay to… constantly spin the same wheel of uncertainty over and over again? We meet, we don't. I have some inkling of who you are, sometimes I don't."

"I know, but it's so much _different _when you do get to see it, Sasuke. When you see all the lives you've lived, the ones we've spent together, and even the ones where we don't even know the other exists."

"No," he said. "I don't want it. I don't…" He got up on his feet and started running. A light appeared in the distance. _The light_. He ran faster, but as he got closer, he suddenly stopped.

If he went there, if he went, then, it'd start all over again, wouldn't it? Everything he wanted to avoid by pulling the trigger only pushed him closer to something even worse. Once he stepped in through that light, he wouldn't be himself anymore. He wouldn't remember this experience and he wouldn't remember this life, and he wouldn't remember -

"Your name?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Which one?" The voice chuckled.

Sasuke became even more angry. "Don't laugh! Don't _fucking_laugh!"

"You know what it is," said the voice, becoming serious.

Something pressed against his chest.

"It's on the tip of your tongue. I can hear it in your thoughts. Weird how that works, huh? Even I'm a bit surprised. It's floating around in you."

He shook his head. "I don't know it!"

The voice went silent, but the pressure against his front hadn't gone away.

"What were we, you and I? Friends, or…"

"We've been all sorts of things to each other."

Sasuke sucked in a breath when something touched his face.

The voice laughed, a low and hoarse bark of laughter. "Even that, yes."

"Don't read my mind," he grumbled.

"Then stop picturing those sorts of things."

Sasuke's lids fell closed. The warm feeling grew more intense, not so much on the outside anymore, but melting into him.

"Ah, Sasuke," the voice almost whimpered, "Stop… ah, don't pull me -"

"Shut up," he said. "You feel warm."

The voice seemed to sigh, but it was like… it was coming from inside himself. He could hear the other's breath leaving his body and feel the way his chest fell - and a sadness so terrible rolled through him and made it so painful just to -

"This is -" Sasuke started to say.

"Ignore it, ignore it," cried the voice. "That's why I said to stop pulling - "

"Don't be so sad."

"Shut up, Sasuke." It started to pull out of him, but he held on. He was starting to see glimpses of things - past conversations, fights, brief glances, touches - all coming at him in a train of images.

"You want me to go to the light?" asked Sasuke. "Because if I do, there's a chance we'll meet."

"No."

"Don't lie to me, I can sense it in your thoughts. I felt it."

"No, no." The voice removed itself entirely from him, and Sasuke was left with a feeling of such utter emptiness. "What I want is for you to live, okay? I can wait. Time's nothing for me here."

"If I go back, I won't remember you."

"No, you won't."

"Then… we can stay here?"

The voice scoffed. "You aren't very bright in this life, are you? Have you seen this place? Is this a place you think either of us can be happy?"

"I don't get the point of living life like a game of Russian roulette, where sometimes we meet and sometimes we don't!"

"Why?" asked the voice. "Because you have no control over it?"

"Fuck yes that's a problem! Why would I want to live like that, with no control over anything? No control over my memories or who I was or who I become or any of it!"

"That's just the way it is."

"Always?"

"Always."

"Show yourself to me. I won't believe any of it, if you don't show yourself to me right now."

A small circle of light appeared around him.

"Truth is, you believe already." The voice had become the identical image of the boy in the car. He came toward Sasuke and wrapped his arms around him. "Here I am," he whispered. "Enjoy it while you can."

Sasuke wanted to argue more, but… he grabbed hold of the other boy and held him just as tightly. He put his chin on the boy's shoulder, his nose pressing against his neck. The smell, the sense of the person in his arms was so familiar it made his head and heart light enough that he thought he might be floating again.

"Why?" he started to cry bitter tears that fell onto the boy's shoulder. "Who would create such cruelty for us? For others? That we meet like this, and it's all taken away. Over and over again."

"Shh," the boy's fingers wound their way through his hair, coaxing him to calm down. "It's not as unfair as it sounds."

"Fuck it," Sasuke grabbed the boy's face and pressed their lips together.

As long as the kiss lasted, bits of hundreds and hundreds of scenes with them together flashed in a string of images that left him breathless. They parted, the other's lips not so far from his own.

"Live, Sasuke."

_No, no, no, no, no…_

There was a violent tug, and he was plunging down and he was crying and the warmth was gone and then _slam_.

Sasuke's eyes opened. He was in the emergency room. It was nothing but chaos and tubes and lights and people practically on top of him.

"Sasuke, can you hear me? Don't try to talk, there's a tube in your throat. You're in the emergency room, and you've just come out of surgery. Blink once if you understand what I'm saying to you?"

He blinked once. A wetness fell down his cheek. Then there was more. The tears started spilling uncontrollably. The surgeons scrambled around him, checking the monitors, and shooting him up with a shot of morphine, but still the tears came. Sasuke stared at the ceiling, knowing some important experience had occurred but not remembering quite what it was…

The morphine kicked in; his eyes closed. Something warm touched his cheek. It felt like a hand. A finger passed over his lower lip.

_Naruto_.

But the name - and the memory of the presence he had just felt - was gone and forgotten the instant he slipped into a heavy sleep, fading like a dream upon waking


End file.
